


Break the Rules

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Humor, I Don't Even Know, Just a Cute lil Thing, Merperson Tony Stark, Tony Stark Does What He Wants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 03:16:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7874035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony has always been curious about humans because they were so <em>weird</em>. They cared about strange things called ‘genders’ and ‘races’ and spoke in strange, foreign languages that took him a long time to decode. Humans had entire sets of rules around those strange blankets they covered themselves with too, even those things that went on body parts called ‘feet’. </p><p>Pepper and Natasha thought he was insane, of course, but Natasha is a warrior, she was leery by nature and Pepper was very practical.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break the Rules

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GoodSourceofFiber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodSourceofFiber/gifts).



> Ideally I would have built a whole world around this in which Tony has a totally different set of pronouns/ labels/ ect for people, but this is a oneshot so we're going to casually ignore the gendered language despite all merfolk being essentially agender. Also the gender thing is defined in pretty cisnormative terms, but Tony's picking up on human conversations, which would be cisnormative so that's why that's a thing. I don't actually think junk= gender. That isn't always how it works. 
> 
> Anyways, this was far more fun to write than I thought it would be and I need to write a full length mermaid fic ASAP but not now because I have 2 other stories on the go.

Tony has always been curious about humans because they were so _weird_. They cared about strange things called ‘genders’ and ‘races’ and spoke in strange, foreign languages that took him a long time to decode. Humans had entire sets of rules around those strange blankets they covered themselves with too, even those things that went on body parts called ‘feet’. But they were a curious species, always out and about in places they shouldn’t be able to get to and Tony could admire ingenuity like that. His father warned him to stay away because humans were cruel merciless, killing anything they deemed different but Howard did that too so Tony didn’t see how the trait was human. Everyone had good and bad and Tony wanted to learn more about the blankets they wore and what they meant.

Pepper and Natasha thought he was insane, of course, but Natasha is a warrior, she was leery by nature and Pepper was very practical. There was nothing practical about the human blankets to her, they did not use blankets to cover their skin, nor did they shame those who broke the blanket rules. Pepper found the humans to be senseless creatures that made little sense and Tony agreed, which was why he was fond of them. They were random and strange and they had odd rules for the most mundane of things. It was _interesting_ and he wanted to know all the bizarre rules humans had. When they migrated to new areas the rules were different too, everything changed, including those strange blankets. Different areas had different skin colors too and he found that curious. Where he was from skin color variations were often related to tail color and was mostly irrelevant. It was the tail itself that was important, not that he had to worry about that because his own tail was very pretty.

Humans did not have tails and it made their attempts at swimming very amusing to watch. One of his favorite past times is watching humans try and plash their way around in the water with no real idea of how to handle themselves. They did not follow water patterns, or have fins, or gills, they simply flailed their limbs around until they started moving and that was _hilarious_ to watch. It was especially amusing if the humans were tiny, then they did double the flailing to keep their heads above water because they seemed to breath through their food holes. That had been a horrifying discovery and Tony wanted to know how _that_ worked. Could they breathe and eat at the same time, if so how? He had gills of course, that did not disrupt his eating, only his ability to speak to others. Humans did not use the language of the sea though; they used different sounds depending on which rock they resided.

“You should not be toying with things you cannot understand,” Natasha tells him, hastily removing some strange object from his hand. A human dropped it off a boat and he caught it, he thinks it’s for eating and the prongs are for stabbing. Natasha must come to the same conclusion because she pokes him in the side with it.

“Ouch! Don’t stab me with the food eater,” he complains, hand over his wound. It didn’t hurt that much but he liked to give Natasha a hard time.

“This is not a food eater, _this_ is a food eater,” she says, pointing to her mouth, “this is a weapon. But it is tiny, humans are stupid and they do not know how to make weapons.”

“It is not a weapon, it’s a food eater, they stab the food and put it into the food hole. I’ve seen it,” Tony tells her. _He_ was the one spending time watching the humans, _he_ knew what a food eater was, thank you.

“Why would they do that? Do they not have hands?” she asks, frowning.

“They think it is barbaric to eat with their hands except for sometimes. So they use the food eater, they have a lot of food eaters,” he says confidently. He did not know the difference between the food eaters but there must be one because they had several.

“They think it is barbaric except for sometimes? What kind of absurd response is that? They either find it barbaric or they don’t,” Natasha says, throwing her hands up.

“Don’t get mad at me, I don’t understand their rules I just observe them. How am I supposed to know the difference between the slop they use the food eaters for and the triangles they don’t use them for? Humans are strange, like those blankets they use to cover their skin. They have many pictures of them lacking the blankets but if they see someone without the blankets they freak out. Do you want to wear the blankets or not? I don’t understand what the big deal is with those blankets,” he mumbles to himself. They were strange and often hindered movement and made the humans hot so why did they wear them? If they were uncomfortable it made little sense to drape them over yourself.

“This is why you should leave them alone, they are unpredictable and dangerous and they make these… tiny weapons to stab their already dead food with. How barbaric, stabbing dead things for no reason! And they are ugly, they don’t even have tails,” Natasha says, rolling her eyes, light reflecting off of them this deep in the water. The humans could not go this deep and Tony has gathered that their sight was very poor, some of them even needed these framed pieces of glass in front of their eyes to make them see things right. Tony held some up to his own eyes once but all they did was make his head hurt. Humans could not see in the dark at all though, if there was very little light they stumbled around until they had more light to direct their path. He could see in the dark very well because he needed to be able to dive deep in the sea and that meant he needed to be able to pick up on even the slightest of light changes. Being close to the surface of the water hurt his eyes if he was there too long because he was not used to so much light.

“I like that about them,” Tony chirps, “I think it makes them fun to study. Why do they do all those weird things? Why do they matter so much? What’s with all the exceptions? There are so many _questions_ ,” Tony says, his fins fluttering in excitement.

“You’re an idiot,” Natasha tells him, trying to jab at him with that food eater again. He manages to snatch it back from her, jabbing her in the side with it as a method of pay back. They spend the next twenty minutes chasing each other around with the food eater, stabbing at each other with it until Pepper happens across them and snatches the food eater away, running their fun.

*

Tony is swimming around close to the surface and enjoying the warmer waters. There were no boats out in this area tonight and thankfully that meant the things the humans dropped into his habitat were lesser here because of it. It was also nighttime, which meant his eyes didn’t hurt because of all the bright light. The moon was pretty and bright enough to see by without burning his eyes it was so bright. This was the best time to be close to the surface because the humans had less of a chance of seeing him and the water wasn’t uncomfortably warm like it was in the sun. It was the perfect temperature for warming his fins a bit, even if he could do without those plastic sacks getting stuck on one every once and awhile. He doesn’t intend to get into trouble but his friends would tell him that he all but attracts it.

He hears some splashing around that did not belong to any fish; they were all far more graceful than that. It doesn’t take much investigation to find a lone human splashing around uselessly and Tony frowns because it has been a long time since he has seen humans anywhere near this spot. Humans did not do well in the water if they didn’t have all that odd gear strapped to their bodies hindering their movements. He swims closer cautiously, aware that humans were as dangerous as they were interesting. But the human was struggling against the waves and flailing around uselessly, probably drowning. Something hurts in his chest so he swims closer; examining the human’s slowing movements while that odd pain grows. He didn’t usually feel like that for his own kind but he supposed they didn’t really drown like humans did. “Heeeh,” the human spits out and Tony frowns at the odd noise, wondering if that was supposed to mean anything. There were some languages he has decoded but that was just a noise, not a word. At least he thinks.

“He- help,” the human wheezes out just as another wave smacks it in the face, causing a coughing fit. The human flails some more and Tony couldn’t just _leave_ it there, the human needed to get to a dry place where it was supposed to be. He carefully swims over and pulls the human out of the way of another wave, careful to hold its head above the water. For a moment he holds the human, working with the current to keep the human afloat and its face out of the water. This particular human had a darker complexion and the light from the moon shone off the human’s cheekbones in a pretty way. The human’s face was longer than his own and its nose wider, and its hair was also a texture that was unlike Tony’s own. Natasha said humans were ugly but this one was attractive even by their standards. He could feel the muscle on the human, and see the strength and that was what his own people valued most. Strength was what ensured survival, if you were too weak to keep up you got left behind. Or, if you were Tony, you got very well known for veering off the beaten path and reappearing again eventually.

The human coughs up water, struggling a bit but Tony was easily stronger. This causes the human to blink in disorientation, its eyes a dark color like Tony’s if Pepper was to be believed. Her own eye color, and Natasha’s, were both light and that had surprised him because Tony’s eyes were dark brown like the human’s. Pepper had blue eyes but Natasha’s were green, and they both had small freckles you could only see if you were close to the light. Humans thought they were blemishes but he thought they were pretty, like scales on your face. But humans had strange standards for what was pretty and they often made no sense. “Wha- what the hell?” the human sputters out. English, thankfully. Most humans seemed to know this language but they all spoke it differently, and some humans claimed others spoke ‘broken’ English. Tony didn’t know how to break a language and they all sounded funny anyways.

“I… don’t understand,” Tony says, sounding strange to his own ears. The language sounded wet and slurred, probably a product of his biology being different than a human biology. Their tongues were different, Tony thinks. His voice catches the human’s attention though and he goes back to wiggling. “I can leave you to drown, but I’d feel bad and humans are a very feisty species so I don’t think wanting to die is normal,” he says. He’s not sure if he’s pronouncing things quite right, it _sounded_ like it was right, maybe. There were so many ways humans sounded using the language though, and he wasn’t sure _which_ one he should use.

There is a long moment between his own speech and the human’s, something Tony knows to be odd because his observations told him humans didn’t like long silences. The human looks him over as if it was assessing him in some way but Tony had no idea what he was looking for. He certainly wouldn’t find anything interesting anyways, he was fairly certain his tail made him undesirable to humans according to their beauty standards. Those ‘feet’ things seemed pretty important, and whatever the hell was between their legs, humans could go on and _on_ about those body parts but only when it wasn’t taboo. He had a hard time keeping up sometimes. “What _are_ you?” the human finally asks him.

“Um… a human?” he guesses even though he knows this human was likely not stupid enough to believe that.

“Buddy, your shoulders have scales, you aren’t human so what are you?” the human asks.

Tony grins because he’s always wanted to say this to a human but he didn’t think he’d ever get the chance. He looks off in the distance, “a myth,” he says dramatically because technically he _was_ ; humans had all sorts of weird myths about what they called ‘mermaids’. Except those were only women, mermen were man mermaids, Tony wasn’t overly sure on the difference except those things between their legs that were taboo but only sometimes. His people didn’t have those so he looked for other differences to judge what would give his people gender. Hair length was one, but only on certain humans, and those fat deposits on the chest but a lot of humans had those too, and not all of them were referred to as female. Plus his own people didn’t have those kinds of fat deposits, and they didn’t shame fat deposits like humans. They were necessary depending on where they were and freezing in the north was a terrible experience until he reserved more fat deposits to keep him warmer.

The hair thing didn’t work either, he kept his own hair shorter because it forever got in his way, but Pepper and Natasha like their hair longer, and so did Thor and Loki. Steve kept his hair short, but Bucky kept it long, Bruce kept his short but Wanda kept hers long. He assigned gender at random and switched it up sometimes for fun. Besides, humans thought strength was a man thing and that served to confuse him more because all his people were strong. They didn’t really have a ‘gender’, they were just… there, but humans didn’t have a word for someone that was just _there_. Everyone had a gender, and sometimes things even had genders, like boats, and that was even _more_ confusing because boats didn’t have things between their legs to give them genders. How did one determine the gender of a thing if it didn’t even have legs? Humans were confusing creatures.

“That is dramatic,” the human tells him, “what myth?” it asks.

“You would call me a mermaid, I would refer to myself as a type of fish but you humans insist on naming things without consulting them first so I guess I’m a mermaid,” he says, shrugging. That was a pretty smart question and Tony appreciated it. See, Pepper and Natasha were wrong, humans weren’t stupid, or at least this one wasn’t.

“Merman,” the human corrects and Tony frowns, unsure how this human managed to determine his gender.

“How do you know? You humans go on and on about whatever is between your legs, I don’t have legs or whatever is between them so how did you determine my gender?” he asks curiously. The human squints in confusion at him but Tony was the one who should be confused, this human knew he didn’t have legs or the mystery between them and still gave him a gender, which meant gender wasn’t related to the thing between human’s legs at all. Then why did they go on about it so much?!? This was absurd.

“Your voice is deep, men have deep voices,” the human explains.

“Okay, but what about underwater? I don’t have a voice underwater, I speak my own language there so what’s my gender then?” he asks. If he had no voice, no thing between his non-existent legs, and his fat deposits looked nothing like a human’s than what was his gender then?

“I… what? That’s not how it works, gender doesn’t just _change_ ,” the human says.

“But you determined my gender by voice pitch, in the water I have no voice pitch so my gender can’t be the same if that’s what determines it. It _has_ to change because the circumstances changed,” he points out. _Obviously_. Maybe this human was dumber than he thought it was. Or wait, this human had a deep voice, did that make it a man? There were not chest deposits but some ‘women’ didn’t have chest deposits and some ‘men’ did so Tony saw that as a poor indicator of gender.

“I’m too half dead for this,” the human mumbles, “and you have facial hair, that’s a man thing.”

Tony frowns, “facial hair grows at random,” he says, though most of his species didn’t care for it but he liked his, it was fun. “You don’t have facial hair, does that make you a woman?” he asks. But he had a deep voice, which was a ‘man’ thing but surely some women had deep voices?

The human lifts an arm and drops it, probably out of dramatics, “oh my god, no, I’m a man I just shave. You’re making this more confusing than it needs to be,” the human says.

“I am not, your rules are bizarre and confusing to me. I don’t have a thing called ‘gender’ but you gave me one based on voice pitch, which I don’t normally have, then suggested hair deposits somehow made me a man but hair grows on most of my species, well, on their heads anyways, the rest is pretty hairless. Humans go on and _on_ about that thing between your legs determining gender but I don’t have one. Yet you still assigned me a gender, which suggests that has little to do with gender because I don’t have one of… whatever, but I still have a gender to you. Therefore _you’re_ the confusing one,” he says, finishing with a flourish.

“Oh my god, you should have let me drown,” the human says.

“Well I could still leave you to it,” Tony offers although he didn’t really want to leave the human to die. He kind of liked it… him. He was still confused about the gender thing but the human claimed he was a man.

“Actually no, I don’t really feel like that. How close are we to land, I need to get out of here and how are you keeping the waves off of me?” the human asks, wiggling around again.

“Moving with the current instead of against it, you humans were very bad swimmers. All you do is flail around and expect to get somewhere. You need fins, and not those things you attach to your… ‘ _feet_ ’,” Tony says. Those things were just embarrassing and the humans didn’t even know how to _use_ them, kicking their ‘feet’ around. “And land is a long way from here. How long can you survive in the water? A few hours I hope, that’s how long it’ll take to get you to land,” Tony tells him.

“I’ll be okay for a few hours, but I don’t have much energy left. I’m hungry,” the human says, sighing.

“I could catch you something to eat,” Tony offers. That would make sense; the human would need energy to swim to shore because Tony couldn’t get him that far.

“No thank you,” the human says quickly, “I don’t really want to know what you consider food,” the human explains.

“Well that’s stupid of you, I eat fish, what else would you think I eat? Whatever. Hold on tight, I can actually swim, unlike your human counterparts,” Tony says, shifting the human so he could move more freely. When he starts moving he nearly loses the human because he hadn’t anticipated that much power behind his movements. Tony reminds him that he is a _fish_ , he lives in the _sea_ , there was a lot of power behind his movements. The human does mostly okay after that, Tony only loses him twice and the human scolds him both times.

The sun is rising by the time Tony gets the human close to land and the human appears to be sleeping, which Tony thinks is irresponsible but he was dropping a human off where he could be spotted by other humans and killed so he figured he shouldn’t judge. “Hey, human, wake up,” Tony tells him, shaking him off his body. The water, for whatever reason, is a shock to the human and he flails a bit, giving Tony a dirty look. He can see the human’s complexion better in this light and the brown is a dark, rich shade that Tony thinks is attractive. His own skin was far paler than the human’s and tinged with the golds and reds of his tail. This human appeared to be all one color though, unlike Tony’s species. That was normal for humans though, mostly, or at least from his observations.

“I have a name,” the human grumbles, shaking himself out. Tony finds the action senseless because he was still covered with water.

“Fine, what’s your name?” he asks.

“My friends call me ‘Rhodey’,” the human says, “do you have a name?”

“Tony,” he says, “technically it’s a nickname but I hate my full name.”

“Anthony?” Rhodey asks and Tony frowns.

“That… wasn’t even _close_ , my name is _Tony_. There aren’t ‘a’ sounds in that,” he says. His name sounded different in his own language, but everything did. Including their non-genders.

“No, is that your full name?” Rhodey asks.

“Not even close. Now go swim up to shore before you die, I’ve gotten you as close as I can.” A little closer actually, Tony could feel the warm sand against the fins at the bottom of his tail, a sign he was far, _far_ closer than he should be. Rhodey gives him a long look but he finally swims away, flailing around like a fool, limbs going everywhere in complete inefficiency. Tony watches until the waves spit the human out onto the beach and the human stumbles away. The human pauses for a moment, looking out to the ocean and Tony lifts an arm and waves it. The action was useless to him but he’s seen humans do this as a form of both greeting and a good bye. That made no sense to him, but Rhodey waves back.

*

He doesn’t expect to ever see the human again, why would he, but when he’s observing a small structure near some surprisingly deep waters he spots the human again. That _same_ human, Rhodey, and he thinks that’s odd. He rarely sees the same human twice but here this one was, drinking something with his legs up on a chair talking with someone. The other human shares his darker complexion but this one had face hair. A man? Maybe. He was still rather unclear on what determined gender. Natasha warned against him observing the small structure but this year there were humans there and he could learn things from them. That food eater was called a ‘fork’! That was some exciting news, even if Natasha didn’t think so.

For a few days he lurks unnoticed but on day four Rhodey catches sight of him and does a triple take. “ _Tony_?” he asks, sounding astounded.

“Uh, yes?” Tony responds, his language sounding worse than the last time he tried this. His tongue was a bit thinner than Rhodey’s; he noticed that when he was travelling to the beach he dropped Rhodey off on. Plus this was his native language, he simply repeated sounds humans made until they sounded sort of right.

“Shit, I thought I dreamt that whole thing up. Mermaids are fucking _real_. How do you avoid getting caught by people?” he asks.

“We’re smarter than your species gives us credit for. We realized how dangerous you were pretty fast when you started to kill us off so we made ourselves scarce. There’s a lot of water on this planet and we’re adaptable. We don’t like it but we can do it so long as we properly acclimatize. Like when humans practice going into thinner air,” he says, hoping that was a reasonable comparison. He didn’t exactly _need_ air so he wasn’t sure.

“You don’t need salt water to live?” Rhodey asks.

“I’m in fresh water now,” Tony points out. This was a quarry, he thinks, and somehow it managed to connect to a nearby lake. But he knew of the structure here from years of exploring, this just happened to be the first time he’s seen a human in the little structure.

“Oh wow. That’s really impressive,” Rhodey says and he ventures out closer to Tony, out onto that strange little wood thing half in the water. Tony didn’t understand the purpose of the little wooden thing but humans were strange.

“Thanks, we can do that naturally. Humans aren’t the only things that can adapt to new circumstances. How did you get here though, this is the first time someone has lived in that little structure in… since as long as I’ve been coming here,” Tony says, nodding to the thing that was solid with inexplicable clear spots around it so you could see in. Why make a solid structure that you couldn’t see through and then cute holes out of it? That was odd but most things humans did were.

“Yeah, military doesn’t much take it well when one of their best guys starts talking about mermaids and shit. Anyways, I retired out here, this house belonged to my grandfather but no one has lived here in years. I can’t believe you’ve been coming here for years, you must have just missed him,” Rhodey says, shaking his head in awe.

“Maybe. It is strange that you’re here though,” Tony says. Almost as if the both of them planned this out, but that wasn’t right and more than that they couldn’t have planned this. They talk for awhile, Rhodey about his time with the military, Tony about Natasha considering she was the closest to military that his people got. Her skills were genuinely terrifying though so he felt that was a reasonable comparison.

Rhodey, he finds, is a soft-spoken man with a quiet sense of justice and loyalty and Tony likes him. He knows himself to be difficult, obviously, and curious, and probably too reckless for his own good so Rhodey finds out those things about him. He thinks Rhodey enjoys his company but he isn’t sure how to read human enjoyment from their bodies, Rhodey’s body did all sorts of strange things he couldn’t have predicted. He could fold those legs _under_ himself and he had assured Tony that the position was not uncomfortable. Tony was sure he was lying.

*

Tony was incredible and he had an _insatiable_ curiosity about all things human. Rhodey spent most of his days talking to Tony now, bringing him new things every day and explaining them. It didn’t matter how stupid or mundane the thing was Tony treated it like a treasure, holding it close and asking dozens of questions. Rhodey has never spent so much time questioning his own values and culture before, examining it closely because Tony had a knack for pointing out the inconsistencies. But _boy_ did Rhodey have a laugh over the human blankets, which he finally determined were _clothes_. And Tony’s confusion on feet would never get old, especially if Rhodey wiggled his toes. Tony would eye the digits and make a face, clearly displeased with the body parts.

He was curious about Tony too, and asked plenty of questions. Tony’s voice was weird and sometimes too heavily accented to understand, but for the most part he picked up on the words. What was strange was that Tony’s accent was in a constant state of change, though when Rhodey asked about it Tony pointed out that English was spoken in several different ways and he didn’t know when was the ‘correct’ one. Rhodey tells him there is no ‘correct’ way to speak a language, the point was to understand the language, not police it. That wasn’t even close to how things worked in the human world but he didn’t really want to explain how racism and such worked. It backfired later because it turns out that Tony had actually picked up on racism and was confused about it. Apparently merpeople didn’t have racism and Rhodey was jealous.

They did, however, practice forms of discrimination and some pretty extreme Darwinism though Tony had had no clue what that was. Rhodey explains natural selection to him and Tony shrugs, saying that that was just how things worked. He was confused by Rhodey’s own horror with that, and when he mentioned disabilities Tony tells him that most people with a deformity of some sort learned to compensate. He had a friend who was a pretty aggressive example of this, apparently, and figured out how to sprint quickly to compensate for being unable to swim long distances. It allowed him slow down when he needed to while still keeping up and Tony appeared to be jealous of Steve’s ability to move fast. Strength, Rhodey learns, is what his people prided most. Tony managed to drag Rhodey across a damn ocean so he counted Tony as strong, but Tony had clear doubts in this.

Most of the discrimination Tony described, though, was all in the tail. Steve’s tail, despite being small and somewhat sickly, was apparently very desirable. Red, white, and blue and his fins were pretty though Rhodey wasn’t entirely sure what ‘pretty’ looked like to Tony. Human beauty standards didn’t apply, Rhodey knew, because he was particularly fond of the shape of Rhodey’s nose and wide noses weren’t desirable according to the standards he was set to. Another of his friends, Thor, had boring fins, all red, but he was very charismatic so people let that go. His brother though, Loki, had green fins with bits of silver, which was somewhat desirable, but no one liked him because he was a trouble maker so he was mostly ignored. Tony seemed to feel some sympathy for him but not a lot, probably because Loki had played some joke on him at some point and after hearing a few stories Rhodey thought the guy should grow a new sense of humor.

Rhodey asks about Tony’s fins, if they were desirable at all, because all he saw was flashes of red and gold and that didn’t tell him much. Tony pulls his tail out of the water, or some of it anyways, and Rhodey’s eyes widen in shock. He’s never seen gold on a fish but he figures there is weirder shit in the ocean. Tony’s tail, though, was beautiful. The red was _bright_ too, and had a shine to it almost like a car would, or metal of some sort, and the gold was just as vibrant and sparkly. The fins, what little Rhodey could see of them, were almost decretive looking they were so well placed and attractive. They almost looked like gauzy fabric draped around Tony’s body, accenting the red beautifully. “Are those colors desirable? Pretty?” he asks, curious about the beauty standards in the sea. He already gathered that race as he knew it didn’t exist though merfolk came in all sorts of different colors, Tony just happened to be mostly white with bits of yellow and red around the scales that littered his upper body. They mostly sat on his shoulders and a little up his neck, and some went down his back where his spine was.

“Yeah. Actually most of my markings are quite desirable, Steve’s fins are prettier but his scales are a little weird,” Tony gestures loosely to his shoulders and Rhodey is frightened by those fingers for about the millionth time. They were long and webbed but it was the talons on the end that got him, golden like his fins while Tony’s hands were covered in small red scales. “But Steve also has three colors and I only have two so we’re about on par as far as attractiveness goes, but technically I’m a stronger swimmer.”

“So the more colors you have the more attractive you are?” Rhodey asks.

“If they go together yeah, if you’re like seven different shades of brown you’re going to look stupid. I’ve seen it, trust me. Plus it’s all in how it looks together. If I had a weird gold stripe I’d look ridiculous but the color is evenly distributed and complimentary. I know a guy that lives… by Africa I think, I’m not sure which country he would be closest to, but his fins are black and silver. Not exactly the prettiest of colors but on him, the way things sit, he’s _stunning_. Loki gets jealous because T’Challa is everything he has but right, and black instead of green obviously,” Tony says, grinning. He asks more about colors and meaning and what markings were more desirable than others. There were certain areas and colors that weren’t considered good, like being all white was associated with weakness, but some white was okay. And having multiple shades of the same color was particularly ugly, as was scales on the front of the neck. The sides and back were fine though and for once Tony was tripped up when Rhodey asked why and Tony didn’t have a real answer.

*

Tony starts brining him things back, random stuff from the sea and Rhodey’s house quickly starts to get cluttered with the trinkets to the point that Sam notices. He makes up some stupid lie because ‘my friend the mermaid brings random shit to me’ sounded ridiculous. Sam doesn’t buy it but he leaves him alone, just in time for Tony to disappear.

He sits out on the dock every day, which quickly proved useless, but he goes anyways just in case Tony came back. For months nothing happens and he debates on giving up but something draws him out there every day until finally, three months later, Tony reappears with fish for Rhodey. “You _asshole_ , where _were_ you?” Rhodey asks but he takes the fish. Tony was good at gutting them, he didn’t want to do all that work himself and wherever Tony got them they tasted better too. And they were bigger.

“What is with humans using your own body parts as an insult. I can’t imagine insulting someone by calling them a fin,” Tony says. “And we were migrating, that’s what we do, but there were too many humans where we were going to go so we’re back for a bit until the humans clear out. I figured I’d visit.”

“I missed you,” Rhodey admits after a moment, “and I was worried about you. I know how much humans hate stuff that’s different and you have a death wish or something, coming so close to us all the time, I thought you off and got yourself killed.”

Tony tilts his head to the side, “‘got yourself killed’ implies suicide, not homicide. That’s a bizarre way of framing things considering it makes my own murder sound like my fault. Anyways no, I didn’t get myself killed; however I would do that. No need to worry though, I’m known for disappearing but I always come back eventually, it drives my pod nuts because they never know if I’m dead or not until I show up a year later with some extra scales and fun new stories.” Tony is grinning in that ridiculous fun loving way he had and Rhodey wants to hug him and strangle him in equal parts.

“Well I would appreciate you giving me a heads up, I’ve been sitting out here every day hoping I was wrong about you being dead,” Rhodey tells him.

“Really?” Tony asks, frowning, “why would you do that?”

“Because I care about you Tony, that’s what humans do when we care about people. We wait for them even if we don’t know if they’ll come back.” It wasn’t a concept Tony would understand, merfolk didn’t wait for anyone because they needed to be strong enough to keep up.

“Oh…” Tony says slowly, “that’s… nice. No one has ever waited for me before.”

“Yeah, well, I know that you’re strong enough to wait for,” Rhodey tells him, smiling down at him. Tony smiles wide at that, clearly delighted by the comment, and touched and that’s what Rhodey was going for. “Come here,” says, gesturing for Tony to move closer. He does, not leery of Rhodey’s presence at all anymore despite the constant warnings he got about humans. Rhodey reaches under Tony’s chin, tilting his head up a bit and presses a kiss to Tony’s lips.

His reaction is near immediate. He pulls away and makes a displeased noise, “what the hell was _that_?” he asks, making a face.

“A kiss, its how humans show affection,” he says, somewhat offended by Tony’s reaction.

“What the hell? How does pressing food holes together indicate affection? That’s weird, please keep your affection to yourself,” Tony tells him sticking his thinner and slightly longer tongue out.

“Well how do _you_ show affection?” he asks, crossing his arms.

“We tangle tails but,” Tony looks at his legs, “you don’t have one of those.” Against his better judgment he laughs at Tony’s response.


End file.
